This book is a classic of marketing and is recommend often among entrepreneurs and successful CEO’s alike. This book is compact and easily distilled to your particular situation. I found it VERY helpful to understand marketing in general but also as a lesson in organizational change as well. While it might not seem useful internally to an organization, this book is fundamentally about individual and group psychology, choice theory, influence, and customer satisfaction. When viewed from those angles these 22 Laws become VERY useful to a much broader audience. I recommend this book for leaders and managers, marketers, industry and market analysts, entrepreneurs, and startups.
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
Author Sebastian Junger (of A Perfect Storm) lays out his personal experiences with PTSD and his efforts to overcome it but while in so doing learning a great deal about war, psychology, belonging to a group and society, and political viewpoints in our country. This book was an eye opening example of the usefulness of evolutionary psychology, transitions theory, and applied journalism to a VERY important challenge our country faces with 2 lengthy and on-going wars and many of our war fighters returning home with inadequate supports and systems to get them transitioned back into society in a healthy way. This book was informative for me and some of my own personal experiences and I have shared it as a resource for fire fighters, police officers, as well as leaders in organizations seeking to understand how individuals operate and don’t operate in a larger organization, especially during and after largescale disruptions and adversity like wars and natural disasters. I recommend this book for leaders and managers, change agents, and people interested in evolutionary psychology and how to cultivate and maintain a strong, tightly knit group or organization for an improved sense of belonging.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Steven Pinker is one of the greatest philosophical thinkers of our time. He’s written extensively in the field of ethics, environment ethics, and animal rights. This book was started before the presidential election of 2016 but accelerated to address the fomenting and destabilizing effects of nationalism, identity politics, and anti-science and anti-reason currents popping up in the US and abroad. Pinker explores an extensive lists of macro measures of “quality and quantity” of life since the Enlightenment with his central thesis being that humanity has made considerable progress across almost all measure DESPITE the “sense” that we aren’t and that we’re perpetually headed for decline. He explores these facts with extensive empirical evidence and also describe the varying hypotheses (not all his own) as to why we “feel” the sense of dread and decline. He speaks to political rhetoric coupled with increasingly massive volumes of sensationalist and offense seeking media, mixed in with our natural cognitive biases like negativity biases (many brought about as useful evolutionary adaptions but which have been coopted in our modern age through marketing and political messaging). I did a podcast with graduate student Dustyn Addington and co-host Whitney Johnson (find the podcast here) on the subject which is pretty entertaining. I recommend the book for anyone interested in history and the philosophy of science, as well as those interested in long range planning, macro economics and economic development, empirical evidence based analyses at a micro and macro level, and philosophy of history as well. This book I believe is a helpful North Start when you’re feeling adrift or overly negative/cynical/frustrated with where you “feel” things are headed. This book will lay out the empirical evidence that supports that while short term events and narratives may sway you emotions, reason will prevail with supported empirical evidence.
The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor
This book is a lengthy, deep, and rich in detail. It spans 5000 years of history on this continent and explores the true breadth and interrelationships of the varied regions of Africa. I found it quite eye opening to get a deep sense of the wealth, diversity, challenges, peoples, currents of history, oppression, and growth in this ancient place. I read this in preparation for my trip to Malawi to do business training and development and found it quite helpful to understand the history at a regional as well as cultural level. This continent and it’s peoples have so much opportunity to collectively grow out of its very low level of economic development but I believe for others to help (non-African’s) they much first have a deep understanding of the varied and sordid history of the continent as an essential first step in approaching helping others there. Without the sense of history and context people will be lost in all the currents of influence and historical precedent that are still apparent there. I recommend this book to anyone interested in African history but also colonialism and the globalisation of the world during the 1600-1900’s periods in particular.
Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, 10th-Anniversary Edition
Small Giants is a great expose on a variety of companies, spanning several industries that represent a larger set of companies out there that, if they so desired, could grow quite large and focus on profitability as a big driver of that growth. However, these companies choose to stay “small” by many standards, focusing on excellence, customer experience, and employee satisfaction as key elements of their business models. I found it inspiring and a great contrast to much of the literature in the business world today about either startups that scaled up to multi-billion dollar companies or those companies that have survived for decades. This book is choc full of interviews, examinations, and explanations of the principles and practices at the heart of these organizations. Any entrepreneur, leader, manager, or employee seeking to expand their view of alternative organizations to work for would benefit from reading this book.
Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto is fast becoming a classic and for good reason. He lays out his own journey to using checklists in the medical world to save lives and prevent errors. This book has been used widely since it’s publication and for one, in Boeing for developing training and flight manuals for pilots. I see it as the very foundation of Standard Work and design, implementing, and improving checklists in a variety of processes, not just critical to safety ones, can make or break a process and an organization. I recommend this book for all leaders, managers, continuous improvement professionals, entrepreneurs, and especially for people in the healthcare professions as one of the simplest intro’s to Lean and standard work without being overtly about those subjects.
The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life
This is one of Tim Ferriss’s classic “4-Hour” series. On it’s surface (cover) it appears its a book all about how to get to be a pretty dang good chef and a wicked short amount of time. From his own words, the “chef” part is merely the lens through which Tim is describing, distilling, and disseminating rapid learning techniques and tools. This book is long but choc full of simple tools, tactics, and strategies to learn a new subject with speed, depth, and a significant level of understanding. I recommend this book to anyone interested in continuous learning but who also has a desire to do so productively and with just the right amount of depth to be effective.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
Have you ever been overwhelmed by the number of options and choices you have for one single decision? What about a seemingly endless stream of choices and options? What about always feeling regret and anxiety after finally making a choice and taking action? In Paradox of Choice author Barry Schwartz explores the psychology of choice from an economic, professional, and personal perspective. Backed up by research, this book uses a model of “types of choice makers” - Satisficers and Optimizers, each having it’s positive attributes but also, when in the extreme, can result in significant psychological impairments. I’ve experienced plenty of the symptoms this book describes but I’ve also seen it play out as I raise my children. They’re overwhelmed by choice ALL THE TIME that we as parents and society impose upon them. This book was an eye opener from a personal level but also as a professional in continuous improvement, management, and engineering. Being deliberate and well thought out when presenting alternatives and choices for decision makers will much more beneficial for everyone in the long run if they are trimmed down, paced, and crafted in appropriate ways. This book will help you identify your own choice making attributes, those in others, as well as how to step back from feeling overwhelmed or overwhelming others with choice. I recommend this book extensively to parents, managers, marketers, consultants, engineers, and UW Philosophy Department professors and graduate students.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman lays out a significant body of research, application, and experimentation concerning cognitive biases, neurology, and evolutionary psychology. While the book is lengthy and can be dry at times, it is organized around specific biases, how they were identified, what the latest research suggests, and how one can work to overcome there ill effects in work and life. I love the “System 1” and “System 2” model, while he openly states is VERY imperfect, it does help the reader to differentiate the conscious, aware, slow and “thinking” brain from the unconscious, fast, and unaware parts of our brains. This book and associated research is cited extensively in many other books I’ve read across marketing, psychology, business, management, network theory, innovation, and much more. This is a centerpiece of cognitive theory and principles and I recommend this book widely to friends and colleagues.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Dr. Cialdini does a great job in describing the fundamental components of our psychology and neurology that result in characteristics that influence how we’re persuaded to take action and change our behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. His 6 Principles of Persuasion are: Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, Consistency, Liking, and Consensus. In each chapter on these principles, he relates research, real world examples, and his own personal experiences with being knowingly and unknowingly persuaded by these or a mixture of these tactics. I found this book VERY helpful in understanding my own psychology and susceptibility to persuasion but also what I can do to divert or at least be much more aware of when these principles are being used directly or through advertising on me. These are just fundamental human characteristics and not “bad” in and of themselves, it’s on bad when unethical or devious intents and outcomes are sought. I recommend this book for all leaders, managements, change agents, continuous improvement professionals and for those interested in psychology, cognitive biases, and marketing.
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Tetlock and Gardner have created an endlessly entertaining but deeply practical work in Superforecasting. They each cover the fields of psychology, political science, and journalism and describe in detail the results of their analysis of historical research as well as applied experimentation to uncover what truly are the characteristics of people that can predict aspects of the future to a remarkable degree of accuracy, the timeframes predictions usually stay relevant, what makes for bad predictions, and what are the cognitive characteristics that defy common perspectives and use of so called “experts” in any given field. This book is a great read to understand our current time of endless “Talking Head Analysts” on cable television doling out political, financial, and other various forms of predictions but also as a useful guide in strategy planning, future forecasting, and risk management. I recommend this book for people generally interested in psychology and cognitive biases, but also to leaders, strategic planners, and innovators as well.
Making Sense of People: Decoding the Mysteries of Personality
Author and researcher Samuel Barondes does an amazing job in this seminal work on personality and psychology. After much research, analysis, and collaboration, he and his colleagues formulated the OCEAN model for personality traits - Openness, Conscientiousness, Empathy, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. This model is widely used in ways you may not even be aware of. I found it a great addition to my readings on psychology, personality, leadership, and self-development. With useful examples of well known people as well as historical events, Barondes helps the reader to grasp not only their own various traits but also explore how this model can help them understand to better interact with others with a different mixture of traits. While I personally believe “All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful” (George Box), this model is incredibly useful with a vast research base and empirical evidence to support its formulation. I’d recommend this book for any Manager, Change Agent, Team Member, or anyone else interested in a useful model to understand themselves a little more.
How Can I Help?
Ram Dass does a splendid job providing the reader with rich examples as well as clear insights into the dynamics of service and helping others. Additionally, it instructs the reader in a kind of mindfulness practice when helping others and in service, from deciding to offer help, the act of help and service, through moving on from the helping interaction. It was recommended on BJ Miller’s list of must reads for healthcare professionals and those interested in how to deepen their practice of service. I recommend this book for people in service for volunteering, healthcare, senior care, or who are currently caring for a loved one with a long term illness.
On Change Management from Harvard Business Review's "10 Must Reads"
As with Harvard Business Reviews “On Strategy”, “On Change Management” is a rich resource and primer in the area of organizational change management. The variety of authors bring a broad yet deep background in the field to provide the reader with articles that have prescriptive as well as descriptive components. This book provides a pragmatic understanding of the subject matter but also provides the readers with systematic, tests and proven methods for successful change management. As with “On Strategy” many of these authors have since published books built from the core principles laid out in these articles. A must read for human resources professionals, continuous improvement experts, change agents, leaders, and anyone seeking to understand human and organizational psychology and how to get from current state to a brighter future.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Johnson’s book “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” is a book that started and went in a direction I completely unanticipated. It is highly readable, with numerous references and examples to great minds and thinkers of history, but that brings network science, psychology, sociology, organization design, and much more to develop a deep understanding of how good ideas are discovered, developed, and brought to use in our lives. He has 7 key drivers that bring about Good Ideas and with clear examples, elaborations, and an approachable style he brings a difficult scientific subject and applies it with ease to this much sought after subject of creativity and good ideas. I recommend this book for any creatively minded person, no matter the discipline or interests, for innovative business leaders, for engineers as well as entrepreneurs. It’s on my lists of “fundamentals” to learning, creativity and innovation, and successful structure for life and organizations in an increasingly competitive and changing world.